We saw Intel's plans for quad core CPUs at IDF; now the company has confirmed we will see the new CPUs next year

A few weeks ago at the Intel Developer Forum we got a taste of Intel's quad-core Kentsfield along with the Core architecture briefing. As of last week, this quad-core Conroe successor finally showed up on the Intel corporate roadmaps. The CPU will get its first taste of daylight as an Intel Extreme Edition processor in early 2007.

Kentsfield will still be a 65nm processor on the Intel Core platform, and work with existing 975X motherboards that already support Conroe. Due to the different voltage requirements on Conroe/Kentsfield, the first batch of 975X motherboards manufactured before January of 2006 need a different voltage regulation module (VRM) to support Core processors. However, engineers have confirmed to us the P965, Q965 and G965 motherboards -- slated for release within the next few months -- will support Kentsfield without any problems.

Kentsfield will feature two distinct dice on the same packaging; the chip will essentially be two Conroe cores stuck together, as pictured here.

AMD's K8L platform is also expected to support quad core processing, but the actual launch dates for that platform have not been confirmed yet.

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The general rule of thumb seems to be any board released after the "Core" whitebook was released to manufacturers will work with Conore/Kentsfield. To my knowledge, this is every board built after Jan 2006. I can't vouche for everyone, but the board manufacturers building 965/975 motherboards have a big sticker that says "Conroe Ready" on the box. If it doesn't say "Conroe Ready," it's a crapshoot at best.